Joseph of Arimathea

Joseph of Arimathea was the man responsible for the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion in 29 AD. The Roman prefect Pontius Pilate gave him permission to take Jesus' body from the cross, and he and Nicodemus embalmed and bound the body before sealing it in a tomb in Jerusalem; three days later, Jesus' body disappeared from the unsealed cave, and he would later reapper in resurrected form. In Arthurian mythology, he was said to have served as a Christian missionary to the British Isles, where he brought the Holy Grail and other relics; Queen Elizabeth I of England used this legend to claim that the Church of England was even older than the Catholic Church in England. Joseph is commemorated as a saint in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism.